COP19: Darrel Danyluk on an engineer’s role in climate change

COP19 (19/11/13) – Darrel Danyluk, Vice-President, World Federation of Engineering Organizations, warns that we need to make changes to our infrastructures to adapt to more and more serious events that will take place each year into the future as a result of climate change.

He says engineers need to first look at adapting infrastructure to handle the effects of climate change.

Danyluk offers Poland’s football stadium, used as the venue to these last two weeks’ of climate negotiations, as an example.

He says that although at first glance football stadiums may not seem like critical infrastructure, when you consider that during Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans football stadium offered sanctuary to the survivors, then engineers need to figure out how to make seemingly decorative infrastructure practical in climate change terms.